Weeks after the dusitD2 terrorist attack, the impunity with which the people supposed to be in charge of security operate is being laid bare. First was the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) offering double and fake vehicle registrations to criminals. The effect was that one such car was used to ferry terrorists to the hotel.
This has led the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the Office of Director of Public Prosecution (ODPP) to pitch camp at the NTSA. Unfortunately, this has come with unintended consequences. Honest importers are now unable to bring in vehicles or clear them from the part since releasing unregistered vehicles from the Mombasa Port is illegal. To be fair, the authorities are clamping down on rogue elements but this has ended up paralysing the system, punishing both the good and the bad.
But even before Kenyans could absorb the magnitude of that criminality, they are once more confronted by details of another racket that entails releasing unregistered vehicles from the port and Container Freight Station (CFS). This time round, the perpetrators are Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) officers, who are meant to be the eyes and ears of the taxman. KRA, which has had to sack dozens of staff over corruption, has complained about hundreds of the cars finding their way into the market.
Apart from the obvious matter of security, this raises the issue of the taxman losing hundreds of millions of shillings in revenue. Nevertheless, it is not clear how KRA appears to just have discovered that unregistered cars are in the market while car-sale yards are blatantly displaying vehicles with no number plates, meaning that such cars are only registered after the dealers have identified buyers.
The authorities have to get to the bottom of the racket with KRA, port and CFS staff much in focus. Indeed, for the CFSs, they need to justify why they are still in operation years after they were engaged to help relief congestion at the port. Does the port mean that it has no adequate capacity even with the expansion of its facilities? KRA equally must tell the public what punitive action it has taken against its rogue officers instead of writing to remind them of the obvious. In the same breadth, NTSA should tell Kenyans how and why vehicles are registered well after leaving the port and who is abetting this malpractice.
PAYE Tax Calculator
Note: The results are not exact but very close to the actual.
